Cy-tacean
wreckingduty:
Ralph grins up to his friend, “Nah, nothing much was going on, I don’t lead too excitin’ of a life. Besides, you’re pretty good company, like talkin’ to myself, but not quite as predictable.” Except when he went looking for trouble, things were generally calm for him and helping out the Cybrid was a nice change of pace.
He chuckles as well, “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, I won’t tell a soul. Or a sole.”
Ralph jerks his head to the left, “It’s quite a bit further south…” He pauses as something suddenly occurs to him, “You know, I never really thought about it, not needing the station for myself, but I think it’s in the middle of the world, kinda around the equator.” That’d give everyone a better chance of finding it, though it’d be closer to some places than others, though that’d be the same no matter where it was placed. On the equator was probably the fairest place it could be.
He starts to swim in the indicated direction, but stops and gets a funny look on his face, “Uh oh…” He had forgotten all about the curse the shadow visitor had placed on him, brushed it off as nonsense, but he wasn’t feeling too good and it was the appointed time for the mindswap.
Ralph looks up at the Cybrid with wide eyes, his mouth open to say something, when suddenly his world collapsed on itself for a moment.
There’s a rush as his mind is suddenly inundated with far more information of foreign systems than he could ever handle, pings and beeps and alerts, quiet messages informing him of the status of things he’d never heard of before.
His body feels heavy, heavier than it’s ever felt before, even when he swims down to the very bottom of the deep, he still hasn’t felt this much pressure on him.
Ralph panics, tries to swim, but only his arms move any kind of properly, instead they’re sluggish and not responding how he expected, there’s a weak flail that’s reminiscent of a breast stroke before they fall back to his sides. His new legs skitter slightly to the sides and his cerci swings about wildly. This does nothing to help him and after a few minutes, he simply gives up trying to struggle and he plops down on the sand, belly and face first.
If he knew that he had the ability to withdraw his head into his shell, he would be doing that right about now.
Instead, he lies there for a moment with his eyes closed, then slowly opens them to find him staring at…himself, in the water quite a bit below his view.
His whole body jerks backwards and he chitters in surprise, meaning to make a fearful cry, but his new form had decided that this was a more appropriate noise.
It takes a moment to realize what happened and he sinks his face back down, his voice has more of a mechanical tinge to it, especially since he isn’t used to working the new voicebox, “Great… Just great. Thought that weird shadowy guy was just messin’ with me when he said I’d switch minds with the last person I talked to. Forgot about with everything’ that was going on, anyway.”
Ralph had absolutely no idea what was going on when the magic anon took effect. He wasn't aware what was going on, but he felt... weightless. Beyond weightless. The shock of the switch caused the ex-wrecker to sink into the ocean, filling his hearing with the rush of subsurface currents.
And his lungs with saltwater.
Ralph went to kick his legs and found none, but his new tail was more than enough to get him a couple feet above the surface so he could go into a coughing fit. He was not accustomed to swimming, and finding himself in the water was reasonable cause for panic, given the circumstances. Using his arms and tail, the mer rode the waves back to shore and beached himself, yelling in a frenzied panic the whole way.
"What happened?!" He cried, his body dripping with ocean water. "Wh-why am I you, and you me?!" When the former mer gave his explanation, Ralph sneered. "Greys don't joke about their magic, genius!"